S.H.A.R.E.

On the project level we want to help as directly as possible especially poor and war threatened people in growing quantities without any intermediaries. This is happening through independent projects from the foundation itself as well as co-op structures with native and state project partners.

On the donor’s side we want to reach people and institutions that agree with our name and share our belief that personal and societal wealth is only legitimized when it’s shared from the privileged few especially with third world people.

Our Microfinance approach adresses the poorest of the poor within developing countries to help them enabling their own independent existence in the long run. Due to the fact that these people mostly have no financial guarantees, they are chanceless within the conventional capital market getting a loan in order to get a chance improving their living situation.

Concerning the Fair Trade sector, our target group are workers in developing countries and emerging nations who are suffering under unsocial, health-threatening, unhuman and exploitative working conditions.

Within our peace-building approach we want to encourage non-violent conflict solutions on civil and governmental levels from both civilian population and political Stakeholders will be able to draw a positive use for peace.​

Did you know that worldwide …

1 bil.

people have to live on less than one dollar a day

800 mil.

people suffer from malnutrition and 6 mil. children under the age of 5 are dying thereof each year

70%

of the poor and underprivilegded people are women and children

168 mil.

children are being forced to work in factories or on cotton fields

115 mil.

children have never visited a school to gain basic education

Background

1. Social Microfinance

There are many forms of development co-ops and foreign aid for Third World Countries. Every type is eligible thereby as long as it has a lasting emancipatory influence and creates no (further) dependence. In this context, governmental and other international institutions, third-party organizations and private businesses all play an important and useful role. The enormous challenge for developing countries however lies in generating a small business culture that can serve as an important base for the development of a real middle class. This would enable the working population to gain more independence from gridlocked working structures within governmental entities or huge cooperations, which means a better socio-economic diversity to strengthen the democratic structures in a given location.

Within our Microfinance approach, we as a strongly person-oriented initiative are focusing on the self-help and empowerment of business interested people and groups which normally would not be seen as credit worthy. In this way, our work concentrates mostly on the sustainable empowerment of the socially and economically disadvantaged, why the specific needs of these credit users should be given special attention. Therefore acompanying measures like extended professional education, small business leadership and schooling in marketing and sales are decisive and can make up to 2/3 of the program costs. Although the administrative costs of microcredits are high, real interest charges should be held as low as possible and kept in line with productivity development. Thats why only a part of the loan should be paid back within a reasonable deadline.

Nevertheless, S.H.A.R.E`s microfinance approach pushes for the founding of entrepreneurships that should also contend with real competitive conditions. Thus, it is very important to ensure the sustainability of business initiatives and market ability of future plans to expand. Thats the reason why interest-free loans can only be assured in exceptions. Under the recipients are most importantly young people and women as the so called “agents of change” who are very important for a sustainable and self-created development in the country. The selection of microfinance projects follow in different ways. S.H.A.R.E cooperates with experienced strategic partners (i.e. Opportunity International) on the one hand but can identify, execute and maintain projects that support individuals or locally organized groups also by itself.

2. Fair Trade

Today’s world economy is becoming increasingly globalized which itself is a very positive development because the globalization process brought huge achievements with it. One of these achievements is the fact that developing and emerging countries do play an increasingly important role in world-wide economic value chains of western cooperations which allows these countries to catch up with the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, this catch up process isn’t problem free and brings considerable challenges with it because this displacement trend finally had the result that labor-intensive business areas were exported to these countries in order to reduce working and production costs and avoid rigid working regulations. S.H.A.R.E wants to confront these resulting social issues, especially the lack of social standards (i.e. no forced or child labor) by promoting projects in which free trade will be expanded and extended through principles of fair trade. Through this, inhuman and exploitative living and working conditions shall be abolished step-by-step.

In practice, this means our support for implementing voluntary, ethical-social and environmental standards in developing countries’ production as well as the promotion of ethical marketing activities for fairly traded goods. Our project partners are working with us on the level of civil society as well as private economics, because they share our conviction that social and economically responsible trading in production and distribution isn’t only useful to people in the third world. Even local businesses and cooperations can profit in the long-run from Fair Trade since consumer awareness for ethical and social consumption is growing rapidly, which brings significantly market potential for fairly traded goods.

3. Peace-Promotion

S.H.A.R.E wants to contribute to peace-building programs in conflict regions of the world. This will be accomplished by the development of structures that promote violence-free and rational conflict solutions. The points individually are:

Structures that help to see a benefit in the diversity of ethnicities and religions

Structures, which enables sustainable acting within a social and economic context in order to gain individual and collaborative welfare

Structures that teach individuals and groups to protect themselves from demagogy and abuse for political power.

Our Partners

German Network of Business Ethics, Berlin

German Network of Business Ethics, Berlin

The discussion about an ethical orientation of business is a foundational challenge for our contemporary society which requires new forms of dialogue between business and science. Promoting and leading this dialogue is the central concern of the German Network of Business Ethics which stands as a mediator of academic theory and business practice. The DNWE is the national union of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN) that was founded 1987 in Brüssel and works in promoting intercultural dialogues about questions of economic and business ethics. It has over 1100 members in 20 countries and maintains contact to all important international associations in the area of business ethics.

The national concern of DNWE is to foster the exchange of thoughts and ideas about ethical questions in daily business to find sustainable solutions for existing moral dilemmata in (global) economic competition. To do so, representatives from all different areas in society come together to encourage and support ethical efforts in business and society.

ASMERADE, Togo

ASMERADE, Togo

The civil initiative ASMERADE (Association maison rurale d’éducation et d’action de développement) was founded in the village of Tomegbé which is located in the southwest of Togo. Its aim is to facilitate the collaboration of the village population in educational, environmental, cultural and sanitary issues in order to give people responsibility of their own development. Due to this, the association works especially for the local development in Tomegbé and its surroundings and is based on voluntary work.

Next to the support through AGBE and S.H.A.R.E, ASMERADE works through tourism group in the village to tap further sources of finance.

AGBE, Berlin

AGBE, Berlin

The association AGBE – Perspectives for West Africa e.V. was founded in Berlin in 2006 with the goal of developing and applying socially sustainable projects in West Africa. In the language of the so called “Ewe”, an ethnic group from Ghana and Togo, AGBE means “Life”.

In line with this, the association supports specific projects and activities, which serve the goal of improving the situation and subsistence of needy people and positively influence their further development. Therefore AGBE puts special value in having natives in their projects and in having the biggest possible part of the population participate. In order to secure sustainability, one initial condition for AGBE’s support is an existing financial concept for the intended project in the long run.

AGBE is working on many different projects in the Tomegbé region, which are for example:

Building a kindergarten (completed)

Setting up a system for renting solar lamps

Building kitchens for a long-lasting provision of food for the kindergartners in Tomegbé

Setting up a manufactory for locally fair produced, ecological soap

Building cisterns for the kindergarten and surrounding schools in cooperation with “Engineers without Borders”

Opportunity International, Cologne

Opportunity International, Cologne

Opportunity International Germany is a non-profit-organization that is active in international micro-financing on grass-roots level and belongs to the global Opportunity Network. The foundations aim is to give Micro-credit to poor people who are entrepreneurially able. At the same time, they educate credit holders on topics like business leadership and health. The Micro-credits are paid back with interest (Payback rate: 97%) and then re-loaned (Multiplier effect).

Over 83% of the credit holders are women and the foundational values of Opportunity International are: Dedication for the poor, modesty, respect and integrity. A further foundational value is “Transformation” which means the overall goal to support credit holders, their families and communities enabling them an independently and holistically transformation of their lives. At that moment the beneficiary has reached a level of income that gives him the possibility to live a life in decent conditions that can create a better future for their children and communities, Opportunitys mission was succesfull.

Please Donate!

Your donations reach the people in our projects safely and provable. In order to ensure this within every project, we always work in close cooperation with native partners who understand the situation on site and can ensure that your donations arrive without deductions.

During every life-span of a project, there will be regular evaluation trips from S.H.A.R.E members to the particular location in order to ensure that the active involvement is always enabled and the direct dialogue is never interrupted. According to S.H.A.R.E´s philosophy, these evaluation trips will be personally funded by S.H.A.R.E members and will not have an effect on your donation.

Moreover, our work will be most successful if we have campaigners and supporters who share our ideas and philosophy by helping us through their donations. The most useful donations however are these which we can globally apply where ever it is currently needed the most. But you also can donate as a matter of course for one specific project at your own option with our guarantee that your donation is used only for your personal concern.

Thank you!!

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